Browsing: The CMC

Bonnie Amos, the wife of Commandant Gen. Jim Amos, has taken her work to Facebook. The First Lady of the Marine Corps’ page was launched online recently, and pointed out by Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Mike Barrett on Twitter today. Mrs. Amos page is online at www.facebook.com/BonnieAmosFLOTMC. In an introductory post, Mrs. Amos said she is “catching up with the times” and launched the page to reach as many Marine Corps families as possible. “My hope is that this allows for quick and effective communication with all of you Marine Corps Families out there to keep you posted…

Commandant Gen. Jim Amos and Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Mike Barrett visited Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore last week, intent on seeing Army Sgt. Brendan Marrocco, the first American serving in Iraq or Afghanistan to survive a quadruple amputation. As I outlined in this feature story, the trip renewed a friendship between the commandant and the soldier, a wise-cracking infantryman with an (unfortunate) love of the New York Yankees. In December, he became the first veteran of this generation’s wars to receive a double-arm transplant, and he has pushed hard with his physical therapy since. Marrocco doesn’t yet…

One week after the deployment of the Marine Corps’ new crisis-response force for Africa began, additional details about it are starting to surface. The six MV-22B Ospreys supporting the unit are from Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 365, out of Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., according to a Marine Corps news release published today. Elements of the unit, commanded by Lt. Col. Christian Harshberger, arrived at Morón Air Base, Spain, on Saturday after making a 15-hours transcontinental flight from the U.S. They arrived with two KC-130J tanker planes that will support the unit during the deployment. Commandant Gen. Jim Amos…

If you’ve never had a lousy boss, consider yourself lucky. The sad fact is that at some point in our professional lives, most of us — military and civilian alike — will encounter a superior who is an absolute pain to deal with. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is taking aim at so-called “toxic leaders” by encouraging each of the services to adopt 360-degree evaluations, a process in which commanders are reviewed by their peers and subordinates in addition to the officers who oversee them. The objective is to identify bad apples early, before they’re…

Commandant Gen. Jim Amos made headlines last week when he challenged me in a letter to the editor published in Marine Corps Times to attend the service’s difficult Infantry Officer Course as a participant. The invitation was issued after he took umbrage with a recent story I wrote that had a headline saying two female volunteers for the course “flunked” IOC last month as part of ongoing research into which roles service members can fill in combat. I met with the commandant Monday morning at the Pentagon to discuss the issue. By mutual agreement, we decided that it would be…

Commandant Gen. Jim Amos said Thursday in a video released by the Marine Corps that the Marine Corps has enough money to continue training through the rest of the year, but is still working to prevent furloughs to its civilian employees. The video was released one day after the Defense Department’s budget for fiscal 2014 was released amid a federal financial crisis. As laid out here, the new Marine Corps budget calls for $323 million less in military construction spending next fiscal year, affecting some planned modernization and maintenance not directly associated with operational readiness. Amos said in the video…

The announcement yesterday that Marine Gen. John Allen will retire instead of becoming the supreme allied commander of NATO immediately raises a question: Who will head to Brussels instead? Foreign Policy reported on its E-Ring blog that names being floated for the NATO job include Marine Gen. Gen. Jim Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps. The Daily Beast had a similar report last week, before Allen’s decision to retire was announced. Could Amos really move on, though? A shift like that would be a shock in the Corps, which Amos has led since October 2010 through a time filled with…

On Monday, I visited Bonnie Amos, the wife of Commandant Gen. Jim Amos, for a feature on her becoming one of the first spouses of a service chief to visit a conflict area. She toured Afghanistan and several other countries on Christmas week, and was excited to share details about it. As most conversations with Mrs. Amos do, the interview turned into a cheerful conversation in which she poked fun at herself and showed an overall love of all things Marine. There’s an interesting footnote, too: a scan through photos released by the Corps shows the commandant is credited as…

Commandant Gen. Jim Amos has made two appearances in a room full of reporters over the last week, fielding questions about everything from the war in Afghanistan to the ongoing manpower drawdown in the Marine Corps. Perhaps more frequently than anything else, one topic came up: What about sequestration? It’s a tough topic. Anyone following public policy, politics or national security issues in Washington is well aware of the automatic federal budget cuts that are looming if the U.S. government doesn’t find another way to reduce its deficit. They were put in place by the Budget Control Act of 2011,…

Commandant Gen. Jim Amos met with reporters today at the Pentagon, leading me to ask him about the reports this week that his assistant commandant, Gen. Joseph Dunford, is the frontrunner to become the next commander of the war in Afghanistan. It’s one of those classically awkward situations where journalists feel required to ask a question, knowing it’s unlikely a full answer can be provided. Asked what he would do to replace Dunford, Amos called him “one of the finest officers who have ever worn this cloth,” but declined to go much farther. “He’s been a teammate of mine since…